I've never "lost" my whistle per se, but I have dropped it... with two of the local youth facilities usually peppered in %#&*$ goose droppings, a backup is kept safely in my shirt pocket. Health & safety first, right?
I had one of those, given as SWAG at a training. Loved it. One day, somehow lost it. The next week, I found another one just like it (no, not my old one) that a ref had lost at the field. Been using it ever since. Probably 6 years now. Whereas the OfficialSports vinyl ones split and shred within a year.
Re extra whistle. Told it before. USomething boys. PK, rain night before, muddy area in PA. Pick up ball, walking to keeper to remind him, slip on mud, fall on my rear, whistle in my hand goes into mud. Laughs all around. Get up, put whistle in pocket, get out second whistle and proceed.
Left shirt pocket - Game card (usually a reusuable one) with a golf pencil clipped to it. Right shirt pocket - yellow card (I use oversized Wicked Armor cards, and I've had this card fall out of my right shorts pocket too much) Left back pocket - spare cards and whistle (Fox 40 Epic on a wrist lanyard - I use a Kakapo and an Acme Tornado on a "between the fingers" finger grip outdoors and an Acme Thunder and Fox Fuzion on a finger grip indoors) Right back pocket - red card If I'm doing a tournament where I receive scoresheets and use a data wallet, then I put my spare cards in the data wallet and take them out of my left back pocket. I never use the cards in my data wallet to actually show to players or coaches. So if I have to use my spare cards, I move them to the appropriate pocket.
I carry the same except for older boys games when I add a second set of cards in the front shorts pockets for quick draw. I once picked up a piece of trash on the field during a rainy game and my finger grip whistle slipped off when I threw it off the field. The whistle went much further than the wrapper I was tossing.
I did blow the pea out of a whistle back in the dark ages while reffing a basketball game. Would the world end without the spare whistle and second watch? Of course not. But they just ain’t a big deal to carry. The spare cards have the dramatic reasons, but the big one for me is I prefer them loose—the spares in the ref wallet have probably never been out of the ref wallet and help it keep its shape. It’s all about doing what we’re comfortable with. A very experienced ayso referee/instructor tells the story of being told in a National Assessment that a referee should wear two watches. For the next assessment, the ref borrowed a watch—but decline instructions on how to use it as unnecessary as it was just going to be there ....
Easy peasy. Left front shorts pocket - small rite in the rain book (PNW 4 Lyfe) + pegcil clipped to the right spot. Right front - extra (flat) whistle Left back - yellow card + coin Right back - red card Primary whistle with fingergrip in left hand Left hand watch, cheap Casio with stopwatch; right hand watch, Garmin Forerunner with Ref Watch app Nothing in the shirt. Don’t like it. Sometimes I put the coin in the little shorts pocket just to be all crazy. I did that today, only to discover it 30 seconds after kickoff rollin’ around in my shorts liner. Did the girls see the removal? Here’s hoping not.
The only two times that I used the yellow from the wallet that I don't currently carry was because I reached into my pocket only to discover that all of my cards were piled together. So instead of pulling out a lump of cards and showing a flash of red, I pulled out the wallet, recorded the card, then removed the yellow from the wallet to show it.
I’ll add my piece... Wallet with backup cards, left shirt pocket Primary yellow right shirt pocket Pen, coin, and whistle when not in hand, front left shorts pocket Primary red front right shorts pocket Backup whistle back right shorts pocket Sub passes or player passes (as AR, DA or NPL usually) front left or right shorts pocket corresponding to team bench.